Canadian Film Weekly (Apr 17, 1970)

Page 2 “This whole industry is painfully under-researched. They aren’t even testing the effectiveness of the media to see if we are getting the best for our money.” It was the Wamer Brothers vice-president of advertising and publicity worldwide, Daniel Stern, as quoted in the New York Times of March 6. A few months ago, Cue magazine, New York’s entertainment weekly, conducted an _ extensive and intensive reader survey. The object was to discover some of the changing views of today’s movie audiences — the average moviegoer researched by Cue was a young adult who goes to the movies three times each month. The respondents revealed some interesting bits of information which should be of interest to exhibitors, distributors and producers alike. Of the total, 60% prefer small theatres to large; 65% want single rather than double features; 44% felt that higher ticket prices kept them from more movie-going; 67% felt that waiting in line was the big annoyance; 15% were willing to make advance reservations; 33% thought that stars were “important”; 80% read two or more critics regularly; 39% are influenced often; 47% are influenced occasionally; a smaller percentage are immune altogether to critical opinion; 70% still prefer American films to foreign; 60% want to see their foreign films with original soundtrack intact and with English subtitles; 83% preferred colour films; 59% like wide screen pictures; 75% don’t mind the trend toward “freer language” in films; 67% don’t object to film nudity; 45% don’t object to the depiction of sexual relations on the screen; 75% do not use the classification code as a guiderule; 60% approve of the code; 50% feel that there should be more censorship supervision; 50% feel there is too much violence in films (nothing seems to have been mentioned about too much sex); Gone With The Wind was the “favourite film.” The changing patterns are (or ought to be) evident to everyone connected with the mechanism of the motion picture industry. Cue magazine has made some effort to put them into proper perspective, but that is not enough. It is time that exhibitors, distributors and producers put their houses in order (and as Leo Jaffe, president of Columbia Pictures Industries says), “clean out the barnacles that have accumulated over the years, structure our companies in keeping with the times — in a manner that will not only enable us to survive, but in opinion, will enable us to develop and progress in a healthy manner”... CANADIAN FILM WEEKLY view from the topp By GARY TOPP Loving is an intelligent and sym-. pathetic look at a man trying to keep himself together, a magazine illustrator who is bored by his wife, his children, his job and who is mistrusted by his young mistress. George Segal as the commuting New York commercial artist and Eva Marie Saint as his wife are drowning in mutual shame and humiliation, and share a complicity for the sweet life of suburbia. The two protagonists are very ably supported by Sterling Hayden’s plutocrat and Keenan Wynn’s grubby agent. Irvin Kershner’s (The Hoodlum Priest, The Luck Of Ginger Coffey, A Fine Madness, The Film Flam Man) perfect direction builds un Fox begins major revival program One of the major scandals of film has been the _ systematic neglect of some of the studios in preserving old films. Prior to 1948, all films were made of nitrate stock. It was discovered that nitrate film had a life of roughly 25 years, depending upon storage con ditions. Nitrate disintegrates into powder. Films literally become dust. Acetate stock replaced nitrate in 1948. Films on acetate are said to have a life of 400 years. In recent years, a process was developed whereby it was possible to transfer a nitrate film to acetate, making it . possible to preserve permanently all pre-1948 films. But it is a very costly process, in the vicinity of $6,000 to $7,000 for an average feature film. 20th Century-Fox has recently reached into its vaults and has selected a revival of several of their films — _ nitrate-to-acetate prints. Some of the films are representative works of some of the more interesting films of the early American sound cinema. They are rarely seen works by John Ford (How Green Was My Valley), Erich von Stroheim (Hello Sister), F. W. Murnau (Sunrise), Ernst Lubitsch (Cluny Brown), Preston Sturges (The Power And The Glory), Howard Hawks (The Road To Glory), Frank Borzage (Seventh Heaven), Raoul Walsh (Me And My Gal), Rowland Brown (Quick Millions) and others. If this series is successful (at the New Yorker Theatre in New York), it is hoped that Fox and perhaps some other studios will open their vaults wider. expected scene upon unexpected scene, tracing the artist’s mediocrity through the tools of his own trade, acknowledging that a man’s job might well be more than passing importance in the living of his life and showing that a lot of energy is required to keep a loving relationship in focus. Loving is a Columbia Pictures’ release. Also from Columbia is an animated film (14 minutes) by a Czech film-artist, produced at the National Film Board. Entitled To See Or Not To See, it shows that you can stare down your worst fears if you only wear the right glasses and it gives a clear view of what your inner self really looks like. (Actually he looks just like you, only smaller and more scared.) Exhibitors might be interested in this delightful little film as it would be a pleasant departure from the usual out-of-date travelogues and the silly cartoons that we are accustomed to and tired of watching before the main feature. * * “The greatest number of admissions in any city anywhere in the world in the history of the motion picture industry. In the first 17 days, over 440,000 people in the city of Paris have seen Borsalino. (more people than attended the Woodstock Music Festival).” So read a recent ad in Variety for Paramount’s new release starring Jean-Paul Belmondo and Alain Delon. Borsalino is a_big-scale gangster movie concerning the Marseilles underworld milieu of the SAS 8 . Arthur Hailey’s bestselling novel, Airport, has been converted into a $10 million movie for Universal Pictures. Similar to Paramount’s The Adventurers, Airport has received a mixed collection of critical reactions and a socko-whammo box-office return. In New York, the Daily News gave the film a four-star rating and called it “a thriller” with “suspense galore”. The New York Times accused it of being hopelessly oldfashioned and “immensely silly” but added that “it will probably entertain millions of people who no longer care very much _ about movies.” My own reaction was Variety Village receives donations Last Saturday, the Circus Wagon Restaurant in Toronto donated all the gross proceeds for the day to Variety Village. This was to celebrate the climax of the restaurant’s grand opening. April 17, 1970 that Airport is no more than a very costly ‘B-movie’ — not much suspense but extremely entertaining (perhaps for the wrong reasons). It has what some might describe as an all-star cast including Burt Lancaster, Dean Martin, Jean Seberg, Van Heflin, George Kennedy, Barbara Hale, Jacqueline Bisset and Hellen Hayes, making it the biggest production in terms of finance, in the 57-year history of the Universal studio. At a Universal press luncheon in New York, producer Ross Hunter remarked, “I made Airport in the hope that it would bring back the ‘movie-movie’ to the screen. The studio chiefs have been shouting that no picture should be made today unless it costs less than $2 million, or unless it’s aimed at the teenage market, or unless it is filled with pornography and nudity and excessive violence. I’m very much against all this, and I’m standing up for what I believe. I think we are underestimating the teenager. And the so-called adult audience has largely stopped going to the movies because there are so few pictures for adults. All types of movies should be made. My pictures are being made to get back the mass audience.” He seems to be succeeding admirably . . . Sorry to Gil Taylor for calling his movie © Flick It — it should be Flick. As I missed the opening credits of the film, I was under the impression that the newspaper ads suggested the correct title. Gil says that the “Flick It” in the papers were only catch lines . . . Vilgot Sjoman, director of I Am Curious, Yellow explains his idea of what pornography “Pornography titillates. It points at one thing, sex, to the exclusion of the rest of the picture. The people are not human beings in pornography. Usually you get to know very little about them. This combination of titillation and isolation belongs to pornography.” An interesting question was posed in Variety — Where does a censor go when he retires from censoring? Our Business (Continued from Page 1) continuing and inexorable obligation and theatre owners must, in the long run, stay in the black or go out of business. The world today is in turmoil in many areas and in many ways. Motion pictures have always been, to some degree, a reflection of current happenings. Anyone who is not aware of the great upheavals in our society has been living in isolation. No one can predict the change of events in the next few years. In the meantime, theatre managers must try to speak softly and soothingly to irate patrons.